So, if the educated, literate and monied people are all going to be congregating around the “Capital City” and illiteracy (and the eventual poverty it will bring) are to be acceptable alternatives for some of us, then we are well on our way to living out The Hunger Games in all of its blithe vulgarity and hardscrabble pain.

The other thing that crossed my twitter timeline concerned the Killer Cop story about a Los Angeles police officer who is rampaging and murdering, and whose pro-gun control 21 page manifesto gives pally shout outs to Hillary Clinton, Chris Matthews, Barack Obama, (the cop loves Michelle Obama’s new bangs!) Charlie Sheen, and others. The manifesto and his bizarre addresses to public figures in news, entertainment and politics gives a sense that he’s lost touch with reality, of course, but so many of his references were television-related that I couldn’t help thinking, “this is your brain on non-stop pop-culture/political news.” I can imagine his ideological mirror writing similar praises to Limbaugh or Krauthammer. Madness precipitated by too much fantasy, too much glam-lionization of drug-addled, doltish celebrities, too much reality-obfuscating propaganda disguised as news.

” Jennifer Lawrence really has a great year going for her. Not only has she starred in a number of big-time movies such as “The Hunger Games” and “Silver Linings Playbook,” but now she has been named 2013’s “Most Desirable Woman” in AskMen’s annual poll revealed on Tuesday, Dec. 11, 2012. ”

” Glenn Reynolds’ latest column in USA Today notes the striking (read: depressing) similarity between the fictional universe of The Hunger Games and today’s landscape:

You know the story: While the provinces starve, the Capital City lives it up, its wheeler-dealer bigshots growing fat on the tribute extracted from the rest of the country.

We don’t live in The Hunger Games yet, but I’m not the first to notice that Washington, D.C., is doing a lot better than the rest of the country. Even in upscale parts of L.A. or New York, you see boarded up storefronts and other signs that the economy isn’t what it used to be. But not so much in the Washington area, where housing prices are going up, fancy restaurants advertise $92 Wagyu steaks, and the Tyson’s Corner mall outshines — as I can attest from firsthand experience — even Beverly Hills‘ famed Rodeo Drive. ”